On Reading Ghost Stories

For several years now, I have been reading collections of horror stories published by Dover Publications. Apparently, there are so many of them, that I haven’t come anywhere near reading all of them. Here is a partial list of titles in this series:

• Algernon Blackwood: Best Ghost Stories
• J. Sheridan LeFanu: Best Ghost Stories
• Bram Stoker: Best Ghost and Horror Stories
• Arthur Conan Doyle: Best Supernatural Tales
• Robert Louis Stevenson: The Body Snatcher and Other Tales
• Hugh Lamb (ed.): A Bottomless Grave and Other Victorian Tales of Terror
• Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
• Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
• John Grafton (ed.): Classic Ghost Stories (I just finished this one tonight)
• Algernon Blackwood: The Complete John Silence Stories
• Bram Stoker: Dracula
• E. F. Bleiler (ed.): Five Victorian Ghost Novels
• Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (In four editions!)
• Hugh Lamb (ed.): Gaslit Horror and Gaslit Nightmares
• J. Sheridan LeFanu: Ghost Stories and Mysteries
• M. R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• Ambrose Bierce: Ghost and Horror Stories
• James Reynolds: Ghosts in Irish Houses

And this only takes us through the letter “G” in the alphabetical list of ghost titles. I have read almost all of these, and I have yet to find a bad collection (though some individual short stories may not be up to the general level).

I strongly recommend that you check out the excellent website of Dover Publications. The books are relatively inexpensive to begin with, but once they have our e-mail address, you will receive many attractive offers.

Then you, too, can shudder and shake your way through the dread month of October.